Lane Detection and Target Tracking Algorithm for Vehicles in Complex Road Conditions and Dynamic Environments

Automated vehicles, predicted to be fully electric in future, are expected to reduce road fatalities and road traffic emissions. The lane departure warning system, an important feature of automated vehicles, utilize lane detection and tracking algorithms. Researchers are constrained to test their lane detection algorithms because of the small publicly available datasets. Additionally, those datasets may not represent differences in road geometries, lane marking and other details unique to a particular geographic location. Existing methods to develop the ground truth datasets are time intensive. To address this gap, this study proposed a framework for an interpolation approach for quickly generating reliable ground truth data. The proposed method leverages the advantage of the existing manual and time-slice approaches. A detailed framework for the interpolation approach is presented and the performance of the approach is compared with the existing methods. Video datasets for performance evaluation were collected in Melbourne, Australia. The results show that the proposed approach outperformed four existing approaches with a reduction in time for generating ground truth data in the range from 4.8% to 87.4%. A reliable and quick method for generating ground truth data, as proposed in this study, will be valuable to researchers as they can use it to test and evaluate their lane detection and tracking algorithms.

This paper proposes a lane detection algorithm using a laser range finder (LRF) for the autonomous navigation of a mobile robot. There are many technologies for ensuring the safety of vehicles, such as airbags, ABS, and EPS. Further, lane detection is a fundamental requirement for an automobile system that utilizes the external environment information of automobiles. Representative methods of lane recognition are vision-based and LRF-based systems. In the case of a vision-based system, the recognition of the environment of a three-dimensional space becomes excellent only in good conditions for capturing images. However, there are so many unexpected barriers, such as bad illumination, occlusions, vibrations, and thick fog, that the vision-based method cannot be used for satisfying the abovementioned fundamental requirement. In this paper, a three-dimensional lane detection algorithm using LRF that is very robust against illumination is proposed. For the three-dimensional lane detection, the laser reflection difference between the asphalt and the lane according to color and distance has been utilized with the extraction of feature points. Further, a stable tracking algorithm is introduced empirically in this research. The performance of the proposed algorithm of lane detection and tracking has been experimentally verified.

Accurate and robust lane detection is critical for autonomous driving systems, especially under complex road conditions and varying visual environments. This paper proposes a novel lane detection framework that integrates a Multi-Scale Residual Lane Graph Module (MSR-LGM) into the Polar R-CNN architecture. MSR-LGM addresses key limitations of conventional graph-based reasoning in lane detection by incorporating three core components: Multi-Scale Node Embedding, Enhanced Edge Encoding, and Feature Preservation via Residual Enhancement. These components collectively enhance lane feature representation, edge connectivity modeling, and learning stability. Experiments conducted on benchmark datasets—CULane—demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance, outperforming prior works in accuracy and efficiency while maintaining a lightweight model size. The proposed method shows superior generalization across challenging scenarios such as occlusion, night, shadow, and lane curvature, making it well-suited for real-world autonomous driving applications.

Lane detection based on the visual sensor is of great significance for the environmental perception of the intelligent vehicle. Current mature lane detection algorithms are trained and implemented in good visual conditions. However, the low-light environment such as in the night is much more complex, easily causing misdetections and even perception failures, which are harmful to the downstream tasks such as behavior decision and control of ego-vehicle. To tackle this problem, we propose a new lane detection algorithm that introduces the multi-light information into lane detection task. The proposed algorithm adopts a multi-exposure image processing module, which generates and fuses multi-exposure information from the source image data. By integrating this module, mainstream lane detection models can jointly learn the extraction of lane features as well as the enhancement of low-exposed image, thus improving both the performance and robustness of lane detection in the night.

The lane detecting algorithm plays a major role in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving systems. In recent years, deep learning-based lane detection techniques have shown encouraging results; nonetheless, the quality and size of the training data set has a significant impact on how effective these techniques are. Active learning is a technique that can improve the capacity of deep learning-based lane identification systems to repeatedly choose and classify valuable samples from a large body of unlabeled data. In this research, a novel 1-dimensional deep learning approach is used to present an augmented Active Learning based Lane Detection Algorithm (ALDA) that picks informative samples based on diversity- and uncertainty-based criteria. A number of benchmark datasets, including the CUlane, have been used to assess the suggested technique, In terms of accuracy and robustness, the suggested method (ALDA) performs better than four cutting-edge lane detecting algorithms. The findings show that active learning can significantly reduce the quantity of labelled data required for training while preserving good performance. The suggested method may improve the dependability and security of ADAS and autonomous driving systems. When compared to other distinct Deep Learning approaches, the proposed Active Learning based Lane Detection Algorithm (ALDA) obtains an accuracy of 98.01%, Precision of 98.5173%, Recall of 95.2296%, F1 score of 96.845%, mAP of 92.7%, and MSE of 0.0097

In intelligent driving, lane line detection is a basic but challenging task, especially in complex road conditions. The current detection algorithms based on convolutional neural networks perform well for simple scenes with plenty of light, and the lane lines are clean and unobstructed. Still, they do not perform well for complex scenes such as damaged, blocked, and lack-of-light scenes. In this article, we have exceeded the above restrictions and propose an attractive network: LaneFormer; We use an end-to-end network for up and down sampling three times each, then fuse them in their respective channels to extract the slender lane line structure. At the same time, a correction module is designed to adjust the dimensions of the extracted features using MLP, judging whether the feature is completely extracted through the loss function. Finally, we send the feature into the transformer network, detect the lane line points through the attention mechanism, and design a road and camera model to fit the identified lane line feature points. Our proposed method has been validated in the TuSimple benchmark test, showing the most advanced accuracy with the lightest model and fastest speed.

Recently, lane detection algorithms have played significant roles in the field of vehicle technology. While many well working algorithms have been developed, they are hard to use in complex urban environments. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach for detecting lane markings using image information and LIDAR reflectance. The proposed algorithm has three phases: ground extraction, lane detections, and combining lane information. The proposed algorithm was implemented on a real vehicle and validated in various traffic environments, including the 2014 Hyundai Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC).

Visual navigation technologies such as lane detection have been applied in many fields. A multi-line detection algorithm based on histogram statistics is proposed for the track-following application. After the preprocessing of the original image and projecting, the pixel histogram in the bird view space can be got and the starting points of the lane detection are obtained by filtering and clustering the histogram. Subsequently, the sliding windows are moved to capture the pixels on the lines. Finally, the quadratic curves are fitted as the model of the lines and are projected back to the original image space. Compared with the current other feature-based lane detection algorithms, our algorithm can deal with multi-curve or cross horizontal lines better in the track-following application with better robustness.

Autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) technology can increase the flight endurance of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) effectively. Drogue detection and target tracking method are significant for probe‐drogue refueling system in the docking stage. This paper proposes a novel vision‐based multistage image processing algorithm of drogue detection and target tracking for AAR. This algorithm divides the whole task into four stages: preprocessor, recognizer, predictor, and locker (PRPL). The adaptive threshold segmentation (ATS) algorithm and support vector machine (SVM) classifier are utilized in preprocessor and recognizer for drogue detection. An improved kernelized correlation filter (IKCF) tracking algorithm and scale adaptive method by window position as well as image resolution adjusted are adopted in predictor and locker for target tracking in complex dynamic environments. Finally, the proposed PRPL multistage image processing strategy is tested using an autonomous aerial refueling testbed. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves high precision, good reliability, and real‐time capability compared with conventional algorithms. The average processing time is within 11 ms in various environments, which can meet the requirement for drogue detection and tracking in AAR.

This research paper introduces an innovative method for real-time autonomous lane detection utilizing a Raspberry Pi embedded system and the OpenCV computer vision library. The primary objective is to improve vehicle navigation capabilities by precisely identifying lane boundaries from input video streams. The system's robust performance across diverse environmental conditions is achieved through the computational power of the Raspberry Pi platform and the flexibility of OpenCV. The methodology encompasses image preprocessing, lane detection algorithms, and seamless integration with the Raspberry Pi hardware. Through comprehensive experimental results, the proposed approach showcases its effectiveness and efficiency in autonomously detecting lanes. This research contributes to the development of safer and more reliable autonomous driving systems

Advanced Driver Assistance systems (ADAS) have seen increasing popularity due to their importance in automotive driver safety and autonomous driving. These systems analyze data from several sensors mounted on the vehicle to detect lanes, obstacles and traffic conditions to ensure safe driving. Lane markings on road with different color and structure provide information on safe drive zone and other traffic restrictions on road. Typical ADAS solutions depend on vision based sensors for lane detection. Here we propose an efficient algorithm for detecting type and color of the lane marks as this information plays critical role in taking the decision for safety features such as lane change and lane keep assist. Our algorithm is pluggable to any state-of-art lane detection algorithm and provides lane type and color for straight, curvy roads. The proposed method is tested on various challenging scenarios and results are promising.

Detection of lane boundaries of a road based on the images or video taken by a video capturing device in a suburban environment is a challenging task. In this paper, a novel lane detection algorithm is proposed without considering camera parameters; which robustly detects lane boundaries in real-time especially for sub-urban roads. Initially, the proposed method fits the CIE L∗ a∗ b∗ transformed road chromaticity values (that is a∗ and b∗ values) to a bi-variate Gaussian model followed by the classification of road area based on Mahalanobis distance. Secondly, the classified road area acts as an arbitrary shaped region of interest (AROI) in order to extract blobs resulting from the filtered image by a two dimensional Gabor filter. This is considered as the first cue of images. Thirdly, another cue of images was employed in order to obtain an entropy image. Moreover, results from the color based image cue and entropy image cue were integrated following an outlier removing process. Finally, the correct road lane points are fitted with Bezier splines which act as control points that can form arbitrary shapes. The algorithm was implemented and experiments were carried out on sub-urban roads. The results show the effectiveness of the algorithm in producing more accurate lane boundaries on curvatures and other objects on the road.

It has always been an important and arduous task to detect the complex dynamic traffic environment, especially for unmanned driving. Although the existing advanced detection models have reached the speed requirements for detection, the detection accuracy needs to be further elevated to improve the unmanned driving’s safety. How to balance the accuracy and speed of detecting the complex dynamic traffic environment is still the primary problem to be solved for unmanned vehicles. Therefore, this article proposes a detection model of the complex dynamic traffic environment for unmanned vehicles by following the framework idea of YOLOv3. Firstly, we regard MobileNetv3 as the backbone and replace the traditional convolution with the depthwise separable convolution in the whole model to reduce the number of parameters and calculations. Secondly, in enhanced feature fusion layers, we perform the multi-scale fusion of four feature maps by the compress-and-expand module, the SPP module, and the cross-layer bidirectional module of feature fusion to improve the locating accuracy and reduce false detections. Thirdly, we add an IoU loss to improve the accuracy of model regression. Then, we employ the improved clustering algorithm to re-cluster anchor boxes, reducing the time overhead while improving the clustering accuracy. Finally, we compare the proposed model with other advanced detection models in the processed BDD dataset and the KITTI dataset. We verify that the mAP of the proposed model improves notably without loss of detection speed, the number of parameters and calculations decreases dramatically, and the proposed model exhibits a more superior performance.

In the modes of both object motion and camera motion, an enhanced Camshift algorithm, which is based on suppressing similar color features of background and on joint color probability density distribution image, is proposed to real-time track head in dynamic complex environment. The system consists of face detection module, head tracking module and camera control module. When tracking fails, a self-recovery mechanism is introduced. At first the Adaboost face detector based on Haar-like features is implemented to find frontal faces, the false positive is filtered according to the skin color criterion, and the true face is used to initialize the tracking module. In hue saturation value (HSV) colorspace, the hue-saturation (H-S) histogram of face skin and the saturation-value (S-V) histogram of hair are built to produce the joint color probability density distribution image, and this is intended to realize the head tracking with arbitrary pose. During tracking, region of interest (ROI) is introduced, and the color probability density distribution of a specified background area outside the ROI is learned, similar color features in the head are suppressed according to the learning result. The background suppression step is intended to resolve the problem that the tracker maybe fails when the head is distracted by backgrounds having similar colors with the head. A closed loop control model based on speed regulation is applied to drive an active camera to center the head. Once tracking drift or failure is detected, the system stops tracking and returns to the face detection module. Our experimental results show that the presented system is well suitable for tracking head with arbitrary pose in dynamic complex environments, also the active camera can track moving head smoothly and stably. The system is computationally efficient and can run in real-time completely.

Lane departure warning system plays an important role in driver assistance systems. The proposed algorithm assumes that lanes are always the straight lines and whole algorithm is based on Hough transform. Due to the complexity of urban traffic scenes, false lane detections are highly caused by warning lines and signs whose shapes and colors are similar to the lane boundary. In this study, we improve the accuracy of the lane detection base on Hough, a score function based on the width between left and right lanes is proposed to obtain reliable lane detect results on urban traffic scene. Meanwhile, a list of candidate lanes is constructed at the least of execution time. Experiments under various scenes showed that the proposed lane detection method can work robustly in the real-time.KeywordsLane detectionIntelligent vehicleMachine visiondriving assistance